(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman tweeted that she was racially profiled while walking home.
“A security guard tailed me on my walk home tonight. He demanded if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious.’ I showed my keys & buzzed myself into my building. He left, no apology. This is the reality of black girls: One day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat,” read the Friday tweet.
The 23-year-old posted about the incident while referencing an earlier tweet from last month where she highlighted a Washington Post profile on her success. “We live in a contradictory society that can celebrate a black girl poet & also pepper spray a 9 yr old. Yes see me, but also see all other black girls who’ve been made invisible. I can not, will not, rise alone,” she wrote.
Two months prior, Gorman made history as the youngest poet in recent history to perform at a presidential inauguration, where she recited her original piece, “The Hill We Climb.”
Gorman reposted the tweet to Instagram with the caption, “In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be. A threat and proud.”